Okay, I took my old Windows 2000 hard drive and installed XP on it. I even
deleted the old partition first, then did a full format instead of a quick one,
to be sure that the new installation was completely clean.
I accepted all the defaults during the installation, then on reboot immediately
went to Windows Update to install every available update. It took about five
iterations to get them all.
Looking around, I found the XP system restore screen, and all sorts of
diagnostic tools. Maybe I could have fixed the old problem with them; I’ve
still got the disk in case I decide to try. But sometimes a clean start is
best.
I’m setting my Explorer folder settings to be reasonable, and then I’m going to transfer my files from the old hard drive. I’ve put that
drive in a USB drive box, so it will be pretty slow. I expect it to take
four or five hours to copy.
Charles Engelke's Blog 